


the other side of paradise

by Anonymous



Category: Vinland Saga (Manga)
Genre: Adultery, Brother/Brother Incest, Dialogue Heavy, M/M, Mentioned Age Regression/De-Aging, Period Typical Attitudes, Sibling Incest, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-26
Updated: 2019-11-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:55:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21575611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: The night has a thousand eyes.
Relationships: Atli/Presumable Canon Wife (Vinland Saga), Torgrim/Atli (Vinland Saga)
Kudos: 3
Collections: Anonymous





	the other side of paradise

**Author's Note:**

> anime denied me atli sobbing on his brother's neck and blaming himself for everything, so... had to put the hurt on a little more. but he's been rewarded with Softened Anija so it's all good.
> 
> loosely follows from [the two](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21443119) [_nights_ fics](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21460645) and contains a brief mention of past sexual assault.

She's always walked silently, especially by night. Her brother-in-law hates it; she catches him unawares often enough that she's become quite familiar with the look that flashes across his face before he remembers to be civil.

It's not that she wakes often from her sleep. An honest day's work around the house is enough to keep anyone sleeping soundly, especially with children finally old enough to do the same. But no girl raised in a town that sends its men off to pillage ever quite loses that sense that things can change suddenly. Especially by night.

So when something wakes her—a voice, perhaps, or a draft on her face, and she realizes she's alone in bed, she takes only the time needed to lift her gown knee-high, and then she's across the room with the children. Nothing out of order there. They're still asleep, untouched by whatever force it was that chose her. She looks to the fire in the center of the room, just starting to go out. There's nothing to found in the fading light it casts. Then she hears the voices outside.

It was her husband's parents who owned the place, once. They died with their sons overseas, the house less full of grandchildren than they'd once hoped, and another family took quick possession of the criminally underused space. But deaths and marriages left the house empty again by the time he brought his brother home, and she was quick enough when he asked to join him there and get out of her own family's crowded longhouse. It's just them and the children here now, but it still feels too crowded sometimes.

She moves closer to the door. There are stools outside, crude little things made out of stumps, so work can be done away from the smoke inside. She's hoping to sit there with the children when they're old enough. The door's been left open, a circle of light shining through onto the floor. Or perhaps it's swung open; her husband's been promising to fix it.

"If you could just live alone," he's saying.

"It's all right, love." The voice is a gentle one, a man's, but not one she's heard before. For a moment all she can think is there's someone else out there with them. A woman. Or a child, even. A lost child and his father who came looking for help.

This late at night?

"But I'd never ask this of you," her husband says, more agitated now. "Not after things had to change. If you could take a wife of your own, we could just split apart and be done with it. There must be a woman in some other village who'd be willing to take care of you, when you're—"

"Atli. Love." The other voice is firmer now. "It's been us since the moment you were born. Nothing's been able to split us since. This _is_ a marriage."

Her husband's voice. With a man. Talking about—

Her mouth dry, she creeps closer to the door.

"Everything's different now." Atli sounds exhausted. "You're different. You never would have said that. You never would have let me say it to you."

"I've not changed at all," says the other voice, "not one bit." And this time the sharpness is unmistakably her brother-in-law.

Unmistakably her husband's brother.

Her legs nearly fail her.

"What does it matter if I say it now? What does it matter if we _are_ lovers, if we _are_ man and wife?" Torgrim's voice is fierce now. "What else can I say to remind you what we have, when the whole world can look at what you have with _her_?"

"Don't talk about her like that," Atli begs. "I'm the one who got them involved with us. This is why I don't want you forced to see them—"

"You know I'm not the kind of man who rolls over and gives up what's mine by rights. Not after thirty-eight years."

"Just please be angry at me. Not them. It's my fault that... that all of you have to live like this." Her husband's voice grows quiet, so quiet she has to strain to hear it. "You know how weak I've always been."

"Atli." She can hear heavy footsteps and Torgrim's voice gets closer. "I don't mean to snap. I understand. You've done your best for me. And for them."

"If I'd been there to protect you." There are tears starting to creep into his voice. "If I'd come back sooner, or if I hadn't left you, the day it all happened..."

He's never spoken to her of how exactly Torgrim got to be this way. Or why no one else has come home, who went off sailing with Askeladd. She's put two and two together, though, even without the details. The whole village has, and she suspects all the other villages who sent their men away have realized it, too. Torgrim hasn't. Or won't.

"Atli." He's trying to be soothing. Trying to soothe _her_ husband. "Don't talk like this. There's nobody with the right to call you weak."

"It's no use pretending that anymore." Chancing a peek through the open door, she sees him slumped on one of the stools, head in his hands.

In the next moment, Torgrim steps forward into her line of sight, takes him roughly by the shoulders, then corrects his grip to a gentler one. "Listen to me," he says. "I don't care what anyone else has done to you. Do you hear me? There's no man alive who can unman my little brother."

Atli, just visible to her around Torgrim's larger frame, leans forward into him, sighs but doesn't speak. His hands find Torgrim's sides.

"There you go." Again in a voice of such gentleness it unsettles her. He lets go of Atli's shoulders and kneels, putting his arms around him and drawing him closer. "It's all right, dearest."

"You have changed," Atli says, then laughs a little. "Not sure I mind it, though."

"Comes of having a woman around the place." Torgrim's arm moves as if rubbing circles on his back. "Now, how can you be the soft one with me like this, eh?"

"You're the biggest, toughest man I know." Atli sighs again, with a satisfied abandon she's never heard from him before. "You always have been."

"I'll be whatever you need. Just don't make me live without you." There's a hint of desperation in Torgrim's voice. "I could have, once. I could have tried. I can't do it now."

"Brother." A strange tone echoes from the word, a yearning that doesn't belong with the word. "You're my first memory. You wouldn't play with me, and I cried until you came back for me. Do you remember that?"

"It happened so many times. Could be any of them. But you've told me before, I remember that. I—" He cuts himself off, exhales hard, and starts again. "I forget you sometimes, don't I? If I forget you, I'm alone. I can't stand to be alone the rest of the time, too."

"You won't be. I don't want to be apart, not really. I just thought it might be... what's best for you."

"Best for me." A short laugh. "Best would be if I could take you off somewhere and marry you. Sleep next to you again. My Atli."

"Please. Brother. I can't think like that anymore."

"I know. I know. You've got to stay with your blood. I could never steal you away, anyway. I'm not the man I was."

"You're everything you were," Atli says emphatically. "And more, now. Having you back again, when I thought I'd lost you, it's..." The tears are starting to sound in his voice again. "Having you remember me... not that I resent it, your condition—"

"Now who's pretending." Torgrim's speech is short and sharp again, his back rigid. "Call it what it is. It's a fucking humiliation."

"It's a battle injury." Atli is the one doing the soothing now. "I love you then, too."

"'Me'. Very funny. You'd think I'd remember what happens, if that's _me_."

"It's you." His voice is calm, reassuring, slipping easily into the attitude he takes with the children when they're frightened of the dark. "When you need something different from me. You're not alone when you're like that."

It's silent, except for a snap from the candle. And her heartbeat, which sounds as loud as a wardrum in her ears.

"You think I don't know my own brother?" He waits. No response but a growl. "Torgrim. Love. You remember all those years we were just brothers. And then something new came along. This is just one thing more."

"You think I don't see people looking at me? Waiting to see which one I am today? How much I'm going to make them laugh this time? Even you check me over when you think I'm not looking."

"Tell me, when's the last time you thought about your first mustache?"

"Oh, ye gods." Torgrim groans. "Now, of all times. What are you trying to do to me?"

"When you were growing that out, I thought it was the best thing I'd ever seen. You'd never been more handsome. I checked my upper lip twice a day to see if mine was coming in yet." Atli's hand, the one visible from this angle, comes up and strokes his brother's beard. "You remember how excited it got me."

"A stiff breeze could get us excited at that age, as I recall. What's your point?"

"You went around with that for a whole year. Is there really _anything_ you could do more embarrassing than that? Especially things you can't even remember." The sound of a kiss. "Or anything that could happen to make me respect you less."

"Oh, fatherhood's done wonders for you, hasn't it? I can just hear you now, sharing your words of wisdom about Uncle Torgrim back when his whiskers were the only way he could shame himself."

"Brother, I've cleaned piss and vomit off you when half the band woke up too hungover to move. Theirs and your own. I changed your bandages when you got that wound-fever and couldn't do it yourself. I've sucked you off with the both of us fresh off a fight and a bath six days behind us. There's no shaking me, no matter what state you get yourself into."

"How did you ever get to be like this?" Torgrim lets out a heavy sigh. "I certainly never helped."

"Too much time alone. Thinking."

"I'm not complaining," Torgrim says, gently. "Be as sweet and kind as you want, just be you. You're the only thing keeping me around."

"Don't _say_ that! I couldn't bear—"

"You know well enough what I mean. Keeping me here as myself."

"I just worry," Atli says, subdued. "You never wanted to live like this. If you ever... regret choosing this, I can..."

"I never let you kiss me enough, that's what I regret. How can I go anywhere before we've made that up, eh?"

There's a long silence. Those might be kisses she hears, or the candle starting to gutter. Or nothing.

"If I told you," Atli begins at last, "how much there is to forgive me for..."

"There's nothing," Torgrim says, firmly. "Keep it to yourself. You're tired. Come on, what's it going to take to get you feeling better?"

"Don't, not here. I get so nervous near the house—"

"Your back, then. Who could see anything wrong with a brotherly back rub?" The shape that's Torgrim starts to move around the stool, and she moves back from the door.

"The way you give back rubs, anyone would think you _are_ fucking me."

"Only because you sound like you're getting fucked when I rub your back."

The way they're speaking reminds her of things she's heard before. But she's never heard them mixed. Siblings bickering, with a lifetime of closeness behind them. The back-and-forth of a man and wife together for years.

She dares to move her head back to the crack in the door, and they're still talking quietly with each other. No danger of being seen; her husband's leaning back into his brother's embrace with his head looking straight up. Torgrim's arms around him from behind, holding a hand lifted up to meet his. Like a married couple. One that's known each other far, far too long.

"Oh, would you look at that. And that's just from talk. Who'd think you're nearly forty?"

"And you even older. Still thinking a quick fuck solves everything."

"Come on, love. Big brother knows best. I'll do the work, you've been wearing yourself out."

Torgrim gives one last tug, and Atli stands and pats his knees the way he's been doing in the cold lately. Their shapes start to move away into the night, the sound of footsteps mixed with laughter, the kind she hears sometimes before they notice she's there. The light from the candle is gone now, and she finally allows herself to slide down onto the floor, trying to make out the shape of the future in the embers of the dying fire.


End file.
